Emotion Sickness
by Raiko Toho
Summary: Annabeth reflects on Thalia, Luke, and Percy. After Battle of the Labyrinth. No pairings, interpret as you will.


**Emotion Sickness**

by Raiko Toho

Disclaimer: I don't own _Percy Jackson & The Olympians_.

Summary: Annabeth reflects on Thalia, Luke, and Percy. After Battle of the Labyrinth. No pairings, interpret as you will.

I worshiped Thalia, and I loved Luke. I never questioned it, and I never imagined it would be anything different. That was the way of the world, had been ever since I had set eyes on the pair. I still remember that day; it's one of the memories that somehow manages to ingrain itself into my mind.

-

There I was, all of seven and no bigger than an itch, trying to fight off a giant spider with a stick. Of course, since my greatest fear is-- guess what?-- spiders, I wasn't having too easy a time of it.

We were on the side of a road somewhere between Richmond and D.C., near the woods. The spider clicked its mandibles and lunged, and I parried its attack with my clumsy skills. Somehow, my branch got knocked out of my hands and I froze in shock and terror. It's multitude of red eyes glinted menacingly, and I cringed, preparing for a painful, bloody death.

The next thing I knew, I was wrapped in someone's arms and being pulled away from the ongoing battle. I could hear shrieks of fury and muffled thumps from the spider, but the noise faded into the background when I looked into the clear brown eyes of my rescuer.

With his messy blonde hair in disarray, he looked down at me in concern. "You alright?"

I nodded dumbly, the first time words had failed me since I had learned to speak. He set me on the ground, to my disappointment, and I covered it by turning to look at the fight.

A girl with a shock of longish black hair and dark, grungy clothes was dancing around her enemy, brandishing a long, bronze spear and a silver shield. Even though her form was rough and unpolished, to my eyes it was liquid poetry in her movement, and I knew that I wanted to grow up to fight like her. The complete lack of fear towards the arachnid was another goal I strove for, one I knew would be near impossible to achieve.

With a final stab, the spider screeched and dissolved into sulfurous yellow powder, and the girl wiped off her forehead. The spear shrank into a regular aerosol can which she tucked into the pocket of her jacket; the shield shimmered and merged into a length of silver chain looped around her left wrist.

"Everything okay?" she asked. Then she looked at me and smiled. "I'm Thalia, and that's Luke."

"A-Annabeth," I managed.

-

That was the beginning. The very reason for my biased view of the world, laid out in front of you, to try and decipher. Looking back, I get a weird feeling that if Thalia had been the one to pull me away, and Luke attacked the monster, their positions could have been reversed.

…Wouldn't it be awkward to tell your mom that you have a crush on her sister (okay, half-sister), who is, by the way, also a girl?

Of course, it's just speculation for now, and I guess we'll never find out unless Ouranos decides to be finicky and fiddles around with the fabric of reality.

So, Luke and Thalia were attached to their pedestals with Tacky Glue-- the kind you think is permanent, but really isn't. I never even considered the fact that they might be evicted, especially Luke. You know how every teenage girl thinks their first crush is true love? That was me, except quite a bit younger.

Lately, though, I'm not sure who's on which pedestal. It feels like I'm on an emotional roller coaster, where everything is blacked out so you don't know where you're going until you feel the cart turn underneath you, and frankly, I want off sixteen revolutions ago. I'm getting motion sick from all the twists and drops, and I just want the cart to stop.

Okay, so I might be taking that metaphor a little too far.

Still, with all the current events, I don't know what's going on inside. I loved Luke, that much was for certain. But did I still love him, after he poisoned Thalia, kidnapped me, tricked me into holding up the entire freaking sky, and gave up his body to help the most malevolent life form in the universe come to power?

The problem is, I don't know.

And then there's Percy. The Seaweed Brain, who did the stupidest things I had ever seen, has a bizarre fixation with blue food, and brought another girl with him on our not-date that was almost as good as one. The hero, who saved my skin more times than I could count, risked his life over and over to help people, and came up with the most ingenious, and by default, craziest, ideas to solve a problem. He infuriated me and gave me warm fuzzies in the pit of my stomach. Did I love him?

I didn't know that, either.

The most frustrating thing is, because I'm a daughter of Athena, I should know the answers. I should be able to distinguish the truth from the lies in the blink of an eye, but I can't. I can tell you the capital of Bulgaria (Sofia), the square root of 16 (4), and which president signed the Emancipation Proclamation (Abraham Lincoln, president number sixteen). I just don't know who I'm in love with.

I having a hard time figuring out what I think of Thalia, too, even if the situation isn't as tangled as that other mess. It's hard to want to be exactly like a person when you realize they have their own fears and demons, as well as a genetic legacy that paints a bright red glow-in-the-dark target on the back of their head. _Hey, I'm the half-blooded offspring of one of the Big Three! Come and get me!_ We're friends, I know that much (what a relief!), but I'm not sure what else is embroiled in the mixed up little thread of our relationship.

Percy once told me that Hermes said, "Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy." Got that right. Our family tree is so distorted and stretched, it's about ready to snap from the strain.

I just hope it will hold long enough for me to determine The One.

A/N:

This story is written in a different style than I normally use-- it's a bit more serious.

I got the title from an episode of Kim Possible.

"...all of seven and no bigger than an itch..." This is a quote I adapted from one of Tamora Pierce's works. I think it was The Will of the Empress.

I gave Luke brown eyes, even though I wasn't sure of their actual color, because I didn't want them to be a nice color. (I hate brown eyes, even though I have them myself.)

Thalia's spear turns into a can of Mace when she isn't using it, as mention in The Titan's Curse. The shield is called Aegis, and it has an imprint of Medusa's face on it. Thalia's silver chains (I think she was wearing them in The Lightning Thief) is the form it takes. It doesn't turn you into stone, but apparently, it's pretty scary. I think Thalia's Aegis is like a mini version of Athena's Aegis, which may or may not turn you into stone.

Maybe Ouranos will be finicky and fiddle with the fabric of reality. Stay tuned for an AU exploring the possibility. Oh, by the way, Ouranos, Roman name Uranus, is the sky, which is kinda like the universe. I figure if anyone can bend reality, it's him.

If you've done any 3-D art projects in school as a kid, you might have used Tacky Glue. It comes in those bronze bottles with the white tips, and I was so surprised when my project fell apart "...because it's Tacky Glue! It's not supposed to come apart!" The obvious solution is to upgrade to Super Glue, right? Wrong. Super glue ain't one hundred percent either. My wooden dragon kept falling apart too.

The roller coaster is based on Disneyland's Space Mountain. It's like your flying in a field of stars and you can't see the track at all, so unless you've memorized the ride, it's always a surprise. I'd recommend riding it at least once; it's not that scary since there aren't any sudden drops.

The thing about Annabeth being able to answer the questions about Bulgaria and stuff is from The Battle of the Labyrinth. The sphinx was quizzing her and she got ticked because she was being subjected to standardized testing, not a riddle.

Hermes' quote is from The Sea of Monsters.

Oh, and did you notice the sixteens? Three of them, a number of power, as mentioned in The Battle of the Labyrinth. On Space Mountain, the square of four, and the president who signed the Proclamation. They're supposed to represent the age where Percy fulfills the prophecy.

Wow, I always seem to have a lot of notes for Percy Jackson fics. See you soon, hopefully. Review, please.


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